Bombay Stock Exchange, or BSE , as it is commonly referred to by investors and brokers alike, has refused to comment on media reports that controversial US billionaire George Soros is likely to buy Dubai Holding's 4-per cent stake in the exchange.

Soros, the 29th world's richest person, according to Forbes with a net worth of approximately $7.2 billion, is in late-stage negotiations to buy Dubai Holding's 4-per cent stake in the BSE, the Financial Times yesterday reported, citing people close to the matter.

Soros Fund Management LLC plans to pay about $40 million for Dubai Holding's stake, valuing the oldest exchange in Asia at about $1 billion, a person involved in the negotiations told the paper.

Dubai Holding, owned by the emirate's ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, had been looking to sell its stake in the BSE for quite some time.

Indian laws allow individual foreign entities to own not more than 5 per cent in local stock exchanges.

Madhu Kannan, a former Bank of America-Merrill Lynch strategist, who was appointed as managing director and chief executive officer of BSE last year, told FT that he could not comment on matters related to the shareholdings.

Soros, who had once boasted that removing the then US President George Bush was "central focus of my life" and donated more than $23,000,000 to over 500 groups to defeat Bush's re-election in 2004, was fined $2.3 million in 1988 under French securities laws for insider trading in French Bank Société Générale.

In 1997, he earned the dubious nickname "the man who broke the Bank of England," for selling short more than $10 billion worth of pounds, which forced the Bank of England withdraw the currency from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, thereby devaluing the pound.

Soros had booked a profit of $1.1 billion, through this brazen action.